vituperation

…continued

“You don’t need to worry about payin’ me no money,” he said, and got into his car.

When he had driven off, I walked up to the front porch, where Robyn sat petting Mama and Daddy cat. We call them our “country cats” because they stay at our house so much, as opposed to our “city cats” who live with us in suburbia. No word on whether the country cats are saltier than the city cats or not.

Don’t worry, you weren’t supposed to understand that. But right now, three people are laughing and one is indignant that I used her joke without proper credit.

“Bessie, we have a problem,” I said.

“He can’t do it?”

“Worse. He wants to do it for free.”

Her eyes widened in horror. “Oh, NO!”

“I CAN’T ASK SOME SEVENTY-FIVE YEAR OLD MAN TO LOAD ALL OUR TRASH UP WITHOUT PAYING HIM!” I cried.

We agitated about this development for several minutes. Finally, Robyn suggested I call my dad and seek guidance on the proper etiquette for such a delicate situation.

“If he doesn’t want money, he doesn’t want money,” my dad said. “Offer, and it’s up to him to take it or not.”

“But I’ll feel so guilty if he doesn’t.”

“Why would you feel guilty?”

Hmmm. Good point.

“People in the country do stuff like this all the time,” he said. “They enjoy it.” He launched into a tale about how my step-grandfather was known far and wide around his town for all the neighborly work he did with his tractor.

While I think of myself as a pretty nice guy, I’m used to neighbors who snarl at me to slow down when I drive less than 10 miles under the speed limit. Used to neighbors who come over to tell me I cut four inches into their yard with my mower and could I please be careful because I made their yard “look funny”. Used to neighbors who don’t say thank you when I cut up and remove their tree that fell across my driveway while they were on vacation.

I’M NOT USED TO NEIGHBORS DOING THINGS LIKE THIS.

I hung up with my dad and returned to cutting up the bush between the garage and shed. When I finished that, Robyn and I wandered the property gathering up items for the junk heap that we’d been putting off, feeling kind of guilty for adding to the pile.

My cell phone rang. It was the dump truck guy, who laughed at my tale of tipping tractors and told me he could come load the junk into the truck that afternoon for only $200.

“In addition to the $125 I paid for the truck or total?” I asked.

Originally, the roof guy wanted $50 to leave his dump truck with the lowering gate at our house for the day. Getting a rollaway dumpster would have cost a few hundred dollars, so $50 sounded perfect. Even the $125 for the big truck was a better cost than a dumpster (and we know Fred is all about the better cost), or would have been if we’d been able to actually get stuff IN the truck.

“In addition to,” he said.

Damn. $325 to get the junk heap moved. At least for that much money I wouldn’t have to do any work.

“Alright. I’m going to have to let you know in a while because after I called you I went down to the store to see if they knew anyone around here who could do it, and right now I’m waiting on two different people to stop by. I’ll let you know for sure one way or the other. Okay?”

We hung up and I resumed dragging the old rug I’d retrieved from the garden. What kind of people keep a braided rug laying out in the yard. Worse, what kind of people keep TWO?

Before I’d gone twenty feet the roar of an engine from the front of the house caught my attention, and a big bubba pickup rolled into view. I dropped the rug and strode across the yard to meet the two men—one very old, one very young—getting out.

“Mornin’,” I said.

I shook hands with the old man, who reminded me he’d been up at the store. He was a fellow Fred, so we had a brief bonding moment before he introduced his grandson. Together we walked to the dump truck.

“Bobcat ain’t gonna reach over the top of that truck,” the grandson declared. “We got a dump truck with sides about half that tall we could use.”

“I may have to do that,” I said. “But I’m hoping to use this one because I have to pay for it either way.”

I thanked them and told them I’d keep them in mind the next time I had something to move, because I like to try and get local people instead of calling in someone from the nearby cities. Other Fred told me where his house was (same street, down by the school) and they left.

Before I’d even gotten back to the rug I heard another engine, this one ragged and loud. The old man was back, driving a big blue Ford tractor that was most likely older than me. The loader on the front was rust-covered, and he had a 6-foot Bush Hog on the back for added weight.

Two American classics

He drove to the dump truck and raised his loader all the way. It barely reached the top of the side. He looked at me, shook his head, and parked at the end of the junk pile.

“I was afraid of that,” he said. “I got home and started thinking about it, and figgered that truck might be too tall.”

We talked for a bit about the junk pile. He wanted the carpet for his rental mobile homes, and…

Have you ever been driving down the road and you see something that makes you say, “What the fuck?”

This “what the fuck?” moment courtesy of yours truly.

He left with the carpet piled all over his tractor, with the promise to be back in his truck to get everything else he wanted. I called the dump truck guy and told him to come on over and load up the truck. About an hour later, the old man showed up in his truck for the other things he wanted. Together, we loaded the truck down with: the carpet padding, the old screens from the house, four trash cans full of trash, a roll of concrete reinforcing wire, and numerous other things.

“You’re not Jewish, are you?” he asked, trying to pry something out of the pile.

“No sir.”

“I reckon I have some Jewish blood in me,” he told me. “Because I like to collect junk, and people say Jews are like that.”

We chatted the whole time we worked. After a bit, we finally got around to exchanging names.

“One of the Anders0n boys!” he said, after I’d told him mine. “Seems like Anders0ns are always smart ones…doctors, lawyers, or startin’ their own comp’ny.”

I laughed. “I started my own company, working with computers.”

I find that trying to explain my job is a two-edged sword. If I tell too much, people’s eyes glaze over. If I tell too little, they assume that because I “work with computers” I’m an expert on whatever ailment their PC has, which isn’t true at all.

“Work with computers? Maybe you can help me!”

He launched into a tale about a computer he bought from Walmart. Someone came over to set it up for him, and put “some kind of password” on it that he didn’t know, and now he’d “locked it up tight.”

“I may have to get you to come over to look at it,” he said. “See if you can fix it.”

Over the course of our conversation, I learned all sorts of things. He was born in the hills of Kentucky, and visited Alabama in 1957 to do some fishing while his back healed from an injury. He never left. His wife died three years ago of congestive heart failure, and ever since he’d been just puttering around looking for things to do. He was considering raising rabbits, and therefore wanted the broken chicken run I’d dragged over to the junk heap earlier that morning. When he was working, it was as a trucker—he’s the third I know about now—but he retired.

After a bit, the truck was loaded and he left with the promise to be back for a second load.

The dump truck guy showed up with his, um, thing to load the junk and made short work of the junk heap. Everything worked out pretty well, because the stuff that was left after the old man took what he wanted exactly filled the dump truck. Without him, we’d have had to pay more for a second trip to the dump, I’m sure. He never came back for his second load, and I put it up on the dump truck at the end of the day. I hope he didn’t have a heart attack or something while trying to unload everything.

While the dump truck guy worked, I cut part of the back forty with the tractor and mower, then took the chainsaw and brought down the dying cedar tree out by the pond. It’s a good thing, because I found it was infested with carpenter ants once I started splitting logs.

More fodder for…

…the ever-growing woodpile.

Late in the afternoon, we took a break from working to sit on the front porch and rest. The dump truck guy was gone, and Smallville was quiet. Mama and Daddy cat twined around our legs, hoping for some food.

“Goddamn,” I said, once I got settled into my rocker. “The sun’s blinding me!”

My rocker is positioned to face roughly southwest; Robyn’s faces roughly southeast. Saturday was perfectly cloudless, and at the late hour the sun was just about at eye level and brilliant.

“Want to trade?” she asked. “I’d rather be sitting in the sun, anyway.”

We swapped rockers. Much better. I’d never sat in her rocker, and the new view was inter—

“What’s that?” I asked. Something sort of familiar-looking peeked out of the trees across the street. “Is that an old barn?”

Robyn turned to look. “Where? Oh. I don’t know. It looks like it—”

“I think it’s a house, Bessie. An old, abandoned house. I can’t believe we never noticed that before.”

Seriously. This thing is like 100 yards from our front door and neither of us ever saw it. We were giddy at the discovery.

“Want to go exploring?” I asked.

to be continued…